Lone Wolf Terrorism: Types, Stripes and Double Standards
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An American Perspective on Amok Attacks
Research Note no 30 December 2017 Centre de Recherche de l’École des Officiers de la Gendarmerie Nationale An American perspective on Amok attacks By Second-lieutenant Alexandre Rodde (French National gendarmery reserve) On March 16th 2017, at 12:50, Killian B. entered the Alexis de Tocqueville High School in Grasse (French Riviera), carrying several weapons. The shooting spree that ensued, lasted ten minutes, and left five victims injured, before the French National Police was able to arrest the attacker1. In France, this type of attack is a new challenge for law-enforcement forces, especially for intervention squads. These weaponized attacks without any political motive - known in France as “amok attacks”2 - are often mistaken for terrorist attacks, notwithstanding their differences. So, let us ask ourselves : what differenciates such an attack from a terrorist one ? Defined as “an episode of sudden mass assault”3 the Malaysian word “amok” was popularized in a 1922 novel by Stefan Zweig4. Modern amok attacks can be described as a sudden assault, in a densely populated area or premise, by a lone attacker5, using one or several firearms6. The United States are used to these attacks, which have been carefully described and studied by local academics and practitioners. Lessons learned from the USA deserve to be known by the French security forces. Amok attackers, unlike lone- wolf terrorists, do not act according to political or religious agendas, but due to a personal motive7. The differences between both types of attack include their respective targets, methods and purpose. It is therefore important first to assess the threat in France (I), then to study the operational challenge it raises for both the French law-enforcement agencies and the French people (II). -
Islamophobia and Religious Intolerance: Threats to Global Peace and Harmonious Co-Existence
Qudus International Journal of Islamic Studies (QIJIS) Volume 8, Number 2, 2020 DOI : 10.21043/qijis.v8i2.6811 ISLAMOPHOBIA AND RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE: THREATS TO GLOBAL PEACE AND HARMONIOUS CO-EXISTENCE Kazeem Oluwaseun DAUDA National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Jabi-Abuja, Nigeria Consultant, FARKAZ Technologies & Education Consulting Int’l, Ijebu-Ode [email protected] Abstract Recent events show that there are heightened fear, hostilities, prejudices and discriminations associated with religion in virtually every part of the world. It becomes almost impossible to watch news daily without scenes of religious intolerance and violence with dire consequences for societal peace. This paper examines the trends, causes and implications of Islamophobia and religious intolerance for global peace and harmonious co-existence. It relies on content analysis of secondary sources of data. It notes that fear and hatred associated with Islām and persecution of Muslims is the fallout of religious intolerance as reflected in most melee and growingverbal attacks, trends anti-Muslim of far-right hatred,or right-wing racism, extremists xenophobia,. It revealsanti-Sharī’ah that Islamophobia policies, high-profile and religious terrorist intolerance attacks, have and loss of lives, wanton destruction of property, violation led to proliferation of attacks on Muslims, incessant of Muslims’ fundamental rights and freedom, rising fear of insecurity, and distrust between Muslims and QIJIS, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2020 257 Kazeem Oluwaseun DAUDA The paper concludes that escalating Islamophobic attacks and religious intolerance globally hadnon-Muslims. constituted a serious threat to world peace and harmonious co-existence. Relevant resolutions in curbing rising trends of Islamophobia and religious intolerance are suggested. -
Is the United States an Outlier in Public Mass Shootings? a Comment on Adam Lankford
Discuss this article at Journaltalk: https://journaltalk.net/articles/5980/ ECON JOURNAL WATCH 16(1) March 2019: 37–68 Is the United States an Outlier in Public Mass Shootings? A Comment on Adam Lankford John R. Lott, Jr.1 and Carlisle E. Moody2 LINK TO ABSTRACT In 2016, Adam Lankford published an article in Violence and Victims titled “Public Mass Shooters and Firearms: A Cross-National Study of 171 Countries.” In the article he concludes: “Despite having less than 5% of the global population (World Factbook, 2014), it [the United States] had 31% of global public mass shooters” (Lankford 2016, 195). Lankford claims to show that over the 47 years from 1966 to 2012, both in the United States and around the world there were 292 cases of “public mass shooters” of which 90, or 31 percent, were American. Lankford attributes America’s outsized percentage of international public mass shooters to widespread gun ownership. Besides doing so in the article, he has done so in public discourse (e.g., Lankford 2017). Lankford’s findings struck a chord with President Obama: “I say this every time we’ve got one of these mass shootings: This just doesn’t happen in other countries.” —President Obama, news conference at COP21 climate conference in Paris, Dec. 1, 2015 (link) 1. Crime Prevention Research Center, Alexandria, VA 22302. 2. College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23187; Crime Prevention Research Center, Alexan- dria, VA 22302. We would like to thank Lloyd Cohen, James Alan Fox, Tim Groseclose, Robert Hansen, Gary Kleck, Tom Kovandzic, Joyce Lee Malcolm, Craig Newmark, Scott Masten, Paul Rubin, and Mike Weisser for providing helpful comments. -
Why Is Junk Food So Addictive?
The Z Cal Young MiddleINGER School Spring Term, 2019 Why is Junk Food so Addictive? By Laurel Bonham Have you ever gone to a chip bag just for concentrated salt added to food to enhance flavor. one chip and came back with way more than one? MSG produces a savory but salty taste when You’re not the only one. 53.12% of Americans eat added to food ,which excites your taste buds and 1-3 cans of Pringles in 30 days! That’s over half of stimulates the release of brain chemicals called the people in the U.S.! Most people know that junk neurotransmitters. The pleasant taste of MSG food is well junk. Even people who eat junk food and the release of neurotransmitters are thought aren’t fooled. They know it’s not healthy but what to be the basis for mild levels of addiction. MSG they don’t know is that it has released something makes food salty and it is cheap to make so that called dopamine in their brain. Dopamine is a they can put more of it and it will make people buy chemical that is released in the brain when you more of it because its addictive. MSG is extremely “reward” yourself. You can “reward” yourself by bad for you. Some side effects of MSG are doing pretty much anything. For example when severe headaches, sweating excessively, muscle you go on your phone that is a “reward” for your weakness, and numbness. brain. Eating junk food is just as bad as tobacco is Why do holidays encourage eating for the brain. -
Red River Radio Ascertainment Files October 2017 – December 2017 STORY LOG – Chuck Smith, NEWS PRODUCER, RED RIVER RADIO
Red River Radio Ascertainment Files October 2017 – December 2017 STORY LOG – Chuck Smith, NEWS PRODUCER, RED RIVER RADIO 2498 University of Louisiana System Raises College Grad Goals (1:08) Aired: October 10, 2017 Interview: Jim Henderson, President - University of Louisiana System Type: Interview Wrap 2499 La. Film Prize Wraps 6th Festival Season (3:28) Aired: October 11, 2017 Interview: Gregory Kallenberg, Exec. Dir.-LaFilmPrize, Shreveport, LA Type: Interview Wrap 2500 Many Still Haven't Applied For La. 2016 Flood Recovery Funds (1:53) Aired: October 12, 2017 Interview: Pat Forbes, director for the Louisiana Office of Community Development Type: Interview Wrap 2501 LSUS Pioneer Day Takes Us Back In Time This Saturday (3:28) Aired: October 13, 2017 Interview: Marty Young, Director – Pioneer Heritage Center, LSU-Shreveport Type: Interview Wrap 2502 Share A Story With StoryCorps In Shreveport (2:11) Aired: October 16, 2017 Interview: Morgan Feigalstickles, Site Manager / StoryCorps Type: Interview Wrap 2503 La. Coastal Restoration Projects $50 Billion Over 50 Years (2:15) Aired: Oct 17, 2017 Interview: Johny Bradberry, La. Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority Type: Interview Wrap 2504 Selling Pumpkins To Support Charities in Shreveport-Bossier (2:44) Aired: Oct. 19, 2017 Interview: Janice Boller, Chairman – St. Luke’s Pumpkin Patch Committee Type: Interview Wrap 2505 No Action From Bossier School Board Regarding Student Rights Allegations (1:54) Aired: Oct. 20, 2017 Interview: Charles Roads, South Texas College of Law / Houston, TX Type: Interview Wrap 2506 Caddo Commission Votes For Confederate Monument Removal (1:08) Aired: Oct. 20, 2017 Interview: Lloyd Thompson, President - Caddo Parish NAACP Type: Interview Wrap 2507 National Wildlife Refuge President Visits East Texas Wildlife Refuges (3:26) Aired: Oct 23, 2017 Interview: Geoffrey Haskett, President - National Wildlife Refuge Association Type: Interview Wrap 2508 NW La. -
Pulse Nightclub Shooting – a Case Study
Jamie Johnson COM 603 Crisis Case Study Pulse Nightclub Shooting – A Case Study Abstract – This article will go into look at the Pulse Nightclub Shooting from the perspective of the Public Information Officer and determine what could have been done better to inform the public at large, the media, and other official agencies that were helping in aiding the Orlando Police Department. During the emergency, a lot of communication was done via social media and while the Orlando Police Department did all they could to control the situation and the message as it was sent out, a lot of things had happened in 6 hours prior to the shooting as well as during the days after the shooting that made their control and management of the crisis a struggle. Within this study, alternative options will be presented to find ways to manage crises like this better in the future. Overview of the Crisis On June 12, 2016, just after last call at 2am, an American born man named Omar Mateen walked into the Pulse Nightclub on Orange Street in Orlando, Florida, armed with a Sig Sauer MCX semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol and started shooting (Wiki, 2017). It was at 2:35am, a half an hour after the shooting began, that the shooter started to make calls to 911, according to the FBI (NPR, 2016). A short time after calling 911, Mateen started to speak to the hostage negotiators with the Orlando Police Department, identifying himself as “an Islamic Soldier” and threatening to detonate explosives – including a car bomb and a suicide vest (NPR, 2016). -
Mateen in Orlando That Killed 49 Reminds Us That Despite All These FBI Investigations, Sometimes America’S Homegrown Terrorists Will Still Slip Through the Net
The Future of Counterterrorism: Addressing the Evolving Threat to Domestic Security. House Committee on Homeland Security Committee, Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee February 28, 2017 Peter Bergen , Vice President, Director of International Security and Fellows Programs, New America; Professor of Practice, Arizona State University; CNN National Security Analyst. This testimony is organized into 8 sections 1. What is the terrorism threat to the U.S.? 2. What is the terrorism threat posed by citizens of proposed travel-ban countries? 3. An examination of attacks in the U.S. that are inspired or enabled by ISIS. 4. An assessment of who ISIS’ American recruits are and why they sign up; 5. An assessment of how ISIS is doing; 6. An examination of what the big drivers of jihadist terrorism are; 7. A discussion of some future trends in terrorism; 8. Finally, what can be done to reduce the threat from jihadist terrorists? 1. What is the terrorism threat to the United States? The ISIS attacks in Brussels last year and in Paris in 2015 underlined the threat posed by returning Western “foreign fighters” from the conflicts in Syria and Iraq who have been trained by ISIS or other jihadist groups there. Six of the attackers in Paris were European nationals who had trained with ISIS in Syria. Yet in the United States, the threat from returning foreign fighters is quite limited. According to FBI Director James Comey, 250 Americans have gone or attempted to go to Syria. This figure is far fewer than the estimated 6,900 who have traveled to Syria from Western nations as a whole — the vast majority from Europe. -
A Schema of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States
ICCT Policy Brief October 2019 DOI: 10.19165/2019.2.06 ISSN: 2468-0486 A Schema of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States Author: Sam Jackson Over the past two years, and in the wake of deadly attacks in Charlottesville and Pittsburgh, attention paid to right-wing extremism in the United States has grown. Most of this attention focuses on racist extremism, overlooking other forms of right-wing extremism. This article presents a schema of three main forms of right-wing extremism in the United States in order to more clearly understand the landscape: racist extremism, nativist extremism, and anti-government extremism. Additionally, it describes the two primary subcategories of anti-government extremism: the patriot/militia movement and sovereign citizens. Finally, it discusses whether this schema can be applied to right-wing extremism in non-U.S. contexts. Key words: right-wing extremism, racism, nativism, anti-government A Schema of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States Introduction Since the public emergence of the so-called “alt-right” in the United States—seen most dramatically at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017—there has been increasing attention paid to right-wing extremism (RWE) in the United States, particularly racist right-wing extremism.1 Violent incidents like Robert Bowers’ attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in October 2018; the mosque shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand in March 2019; and the mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas in August -
Theologians, Poets, and Lone Wolves: Mapping Medium-Specific Epistemologies of Radicalization
International Journal of Communication 14(2020), 1849–1867 1932–8036/20200005 Theologians, Poets, and Lone Wolves: Mapping Medium-Specific Epistemologies of Radicalization BRIAN T. HUGHES American University, USA Examinations into the roots of Islamist terrorism have frequently presented the phenomenon as a result of either perverting political–religious epistemologies into distorted, caricatured fundamentalisms, or, alternatively, as a return to form, whereby a pure, root ideology/metaphysic is rediscovered. The former approach reflects a discourse rooted in print media and characterized by logical argumentation, linear chronology, and deference to the text. The latter approach reflects a discourse rooted in modes of secondary orality, which posit a font of ideal essence that precedes expression. The figure of the digitally engaged lone wolf undermines these discourses. His violent extremism appears only Islamically inflected through an accretion of contradictory mediated encounters linking representations of violence, Islam, and the lone wolf himself. This article argues that a new approach and discourse should therefore emerge, specific to the hypertextual and rhizomatic qualities of multiplicity and contradiction that characterize the digitally engaged lone wolf. Keywords: terrorism, extremism, ISIS, Islamophobia, radicalization, discourse, medium theory, hypermedia, affect Scholars have identified successive waves of terrorist tactics and ideological pretexts in both the contemporary Islamist domain (Esposito, 2003b; Kepel, 2002; -
Article: Why Dylann Roof Is a Terrorist Under Federal Law, and Why It Matters
ARTICLE: WHY DYLANN ROOF IS A TERRORIST UNDER FEDERAL LAW, AND WHY IT MATTERS Winter, 2017 Reporter 54 Harv. J. on Legis. 259 * Length: 19820 words Author: Jesse J. Norris 1 * Highlight After white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine African-Americans at a Charleston, South Carolina church, authorities declined to refer to the attack as terrorism. Many objected to the government's apparent double standard in its treatment of Muslim versus non-Muslim extremists and called on the government to treat the massacre as terrorism. Yet the government has neither charged Roof with a terrorist offense nor labeled the attack as terrorism. This Article argues that although the government was unable to charge Roof with terrorist crimes because of the lack of applicable statutes, the Charleston massacre still qualifies as terrorism under federal law. Roof's attack clearly falls under the government's prevailing definition of domestic terrorism. It also qualifies for a terrorism sentencing enhancement, or at least an upward departure from the sentencing guidelines, as well as for the terrorism aggravating factor considered by juries in deciding whether to impose the death penalty. Labeling Roof's attack as terrorism could have several important implications, not only in terms of sentencing, but also in terms of government accountability, the prudent allocation of counterterrorism resources, balanced media coverage, and public cooperation in preventing terrorism. For these reasons, this Article contends that the government should treat the Charleston massacre, and similar ideologically motivated killings, as terrorism. This Article also makes two policy suggestions meant to facilitate a more consistent use of the term terrorism. -
Prayer Shaming"
God, Life, and Everything "Prayer Shaming" So many topics and so little time. Just in the last week or so, there's been a letter to the editor complaining about my column criticizing those who blame or seem to blame all Islam for terror (I've written a response, but it'll have to wait a few weeks); Jerry Falwell, Jr.'s call for students at Liberty University to carry weapons as defense against Muslims; the cartoon of Santa being arrested for Identity theft, and of course, Advent. With the rash of religion-based topics in the news these days, I really need a daily column to get it all in! But I'll focus this week one that is pretty basic. Prayer. In the wake of the past couple of mass shootings (by "mass shooting" I understand a situation in which four or more people are shot by one party), there has been a frustrated criticism of politicians and Facebook posts that say, "Our thoughts and prayers are with [name of victim community]." The New York Daily News ran a loud front page headline last Thursday that read: "God Isn't Fixing This." What's behind this "Prayer Shaming" as the criticism has been dubbed? Do people no longer believe in prayer? Should we no longer pray for victims of violence? Actually, I believe the criticism is more nuanced. I believe it has nothing to do with whether or not critics believe in the efficacy of prayer. In fact, I know several folks who pray regularly yet have taken part in this very public critique on it. -
Meaning, Choice and Human Truth
Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Criminology Response to mass shooting 2020, July/August Vol 12: 80-97 DeValve Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Criminology ISSN: 2166-8094 Jtpcrim July/August 2020: 12:80-97 ______________________________________ Reconsidering the Response to Mass Violence: Meaning, choice and human truth. 1 Michael DeValve, Bridgewater State University Corresponding Author: Michael J. DeValve, PhD, Department of Criminal Justice Fayetteville State University 321K LTB 1200 Murchison Road Fayetteville, NC 28301 [email protected] 910.489.9157 @Karunaprof (Twitter) 1 The author wishes to express deepest gratitude to J.B. Goss, Richard Quinney, John DeValve, Jeanne DeValve and Aaron Pycroft and David Polizzi for their kind and constructive feedback on this work. 80 Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Criminology Response to mass shooting 2020, July/August Vol 12: 80-97 DeValve Introduction On the first day of August, 1966, an Eagle Scout and honorably discharged Marine killed his mother and wife, then carried weapons, ammunition, and supplies to the roof of the University of Texas tower. From his perch and with his training, he was able to kill fifteen and wound more than twenty. Some years later a retired accountant living in a sleepy community outside of Las Vegas, having squirreled away more than twenty weapons, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and tools to make camera peepholes and barricades in a high hotel suite overlooking an outdoor music venue, authored the bloodiest mass shooting in American history. Cheri Maples was a police officer, district attorney, and dharma teacher. She was a beacon of wisdom, inspiration and lovingkindness to thousands, me included.